This course gives you a reliable model for preparing and delivering effective presentations.
In business, in school, and in public life, we are often called upon to “make a few comments.” Often, people tasked with such speeches become flummoxed. They might not know what to talk about, or ramble without making a point, or simply be confusing to listen to. This course is designed to help you shine where others falter.
We’ll learn how organize talks clearly, write them memorably, and deliver them confidently. By the end of the course, you should be able to significantly reduce your fear of public speaking, use rehearsal techniques to develop a strong, vibrant speaking voice, and perform speeches with dynamic movement and gestures. The speech model that we’ll practice is useful for briefings, elevator talks, interviews, and even as a structure for hour-long presentations.
If you’re a beginner, this course will help you quickly master the fundamentals of speaking. If you’re a seasoned speaker, this course will help you better understand public speaking and push you to the next level.

TG

A really good course. If you want to brush up on your public speaking skills, I highly suggest that you take this. I felt that Dr. McGarrity was an amazing teacher, and you will feel the same.

SB

Aug 27, 2018

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Without a doubt the best online course you'll find for Public Speaking. Teaches proper tone, presentation and speech writing styles. Phenomenal, I've recommended it to my coworkers and family.

From the lesson

Week 4: Overcoming your fear of public speaking and developing great delivery

This week, we'll discuss speech apprehension and delivery. I know the fear of public speaking is a pressing topic for many. Why didn’t we start the course with this? Because I think many delivery concerns go away if the invention and arrangement are good. However, invention and arrangement are just part of the equation - now we can supercharge our delivery. By the end of this week, you’ll have some techniques for combating those butterflies and speaking confidently. If you want some feedback, you’ll be able to upload a practice key point speech for peer review.

Taught By

Dr. Matt McGarrity

Principal Lecturer

Transcript

So I want to take a look at an actual example of public speaking apprehension. So I've got a video clip here and you'll see an actual speaker at a city council meeting. And this clip's a few years old and I blurred the speakers face, but trust me, you will feel how nervous he is. Now by way of context, this speech happened at a city council meeting about a smoking ban. So the City of Bloomington was having a debate about whether or not to pass a city-wide smoking ban. The bill ended up passing by the way, and what it did was it bans smoking in bars and restaurants. So you could still smoke in town, just not inside public places. The State of Washington, where I now live, has a similar state-wide ban on smoking in public places. Now like most city council meetings, this one had time reserved for speeches from concerned students. So this is usually like a three to four minute period for open comments so people who come up and give talks. And the man you'll see had a prepared speech and he delivered it, but it's obvious that he is pretty nervous. So as you watch this clip, I want you to think about two things. First, what do you think is contributing to his apprehension? In other words, what's going on that's making his apprehension worse and then second, how is that apprehension manifesting? So in other words, what do you see? What behaviors demonstrate this nervousness? So let's go ahead and take a look at this video now. >> Okay, there are over 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke. We know that. Any science professional can tell you that smoke itself does not cause cancer. Smoke is a combination of a bunch of different chemicals. Cancer's caused by the body's reaction, negative reaction to it, a particular chemical or chemicals. All the suspect chemicals that are in environmental tobacco smoke are regulated by OSHA. They all have maximums set for pubic workplaces. To refer to something as being scientific for it to be reliable, you have to have three things. One of them has to be measure only what is intended to measure. The variables examined the only differences between the measure phenomenon and what is taken at zero risk and the results must be reproducible in a laboratory, All of this excitement, the reason everybody turns out so much for this is because it's all open to interpretation. No one has any facts, all you have is the studies done, which were questionnaires, basically. They were questionnaires where, did you feel very strongly about this or kind of strongly. That's where they got the information in the epidemiological studies that the EPA used and everyone else used. There are lots of pollutants generated, automobiles, power-generating plants, things like that. One of the major generators of pollution, or was at one point, was hospital incinerators, one of the number one producers of dioxin, which is linked directly to breast cancer. It's been proven that ETS doesn't cause breast cancer. If you, excuse me, I can't get my breath. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay. >> I'm just nervous. >> Just relax, you have a minute. >> [LAUGH] >> Okay, thank you. >> All right. I'm good. I'm not a public speaker. >> I'm holding you. >> I'd like to let somebody else do it. Okay, anyway. The references, all references that I've seen, I've probably done 300 hours of research since this all started. I went to the website that the hospital gave, it's a anti-tobacco lobby called Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights. It was founded by a gentleman named, Stanton Glantz. Stanton Glantz is the one who started a number of 53,000 back in 1991. If you look at any of those other articles, he refers to it a lot. He never references it with any kind of study or anything. He just uses the number. You can see it. Let's see, I have an article from ten years later. Luckily it's still the same number, I guess. ETS hasn't killed anybody, it kills the same number every year. Every single article, it's 53,000. Okay, most of you have gotten studies from The Oak Ridge National Laboratory- >> Mike, you're out of time. >> I am? Okay. >> Yeah, you've used three minutes plus. >> Okay, thank you for your time. >> Wow, ouch. [LAUGH] Hard to watch, hard to watch, right? He is derailed by his apprehension. And the most painful thing for me watching that is knowing that his nervousness is completely manageable. There are some things that he could have been doing to avoid that crash, or at the very least have made it through that speech. So now that we've seen this, we've all shared that pain together, in the next we're going to analyze what happened. We're going to analyze this case of speech apprehension. [MUSIC]

Explore our Catalog

Join for free and get personalized recommendations, updates and offers.

Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online.